Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months. $1.50. 
| NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1909. 
j VOL. LXXIH — No. 19. 
I No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1909, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
George Bird Grinnell, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary, 
Louis Dean Speir, Treasurer, 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1S73. 
PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVES OUTDOORS 
How to enhance the keeping qualities of 
photographic plates and films out of doors has 
long been a moot question among sportsmen. 
Knowing the disappointment and vexation attend¬ 
ing the loss of valuable negatives through the 
\ influence of moisture or humidity, they have 
striven earnestly to find some means for pre¬ 
serving plates and films, to the end that the 
manufacturers have practically been forced to 
1 adopt the best of their suggestions. One result 
I has been better stock and another the indirect 
; benefit enjoyed by all camera owners. 
Different climates affect negatives differently, 
but in some parts of the tropics it has been 
found that negatives deteriorate rapidly, despite 
, all of the usual precautions. Some of the most 
1 remarkable series of African big game negatives 
j included few if any pictures that, as pictures, 
' could be regarded as anything but failures. On 
the other hand, excellent big game negatives 
have been secured. Dipping the sealed paper 
> boxes in paraffin, coating them with shellac, and 
using sealed tin tubes have all been tried, and 
; Consul Chamberlain, of Pernambuco, says that 
films packed in cardboard boxes keep better in 
damp climates than those sent out hermetically 
sealed. 
It was after numerous complaints had been 
filed that a large film manufactory sent a repre¬ 
sentative to Pernambuco to investigate, and the 
results of exhaustive experiments made by him 
are given herewith for the benefit of our readers 
who carry cameras to the woods with them: 
Once a film has been removed from a sealed tin and 
exposed it should never be put back; it has accumulated 
moisture, and to return it to the closed tin is to insure 
its destruction. 
The idea of the hermetically sealed tin as a preservative 
is a fallacy. 
There is no doubt that the enamel used by certain for¬ 
eign manufacturers to isolate the paper from the emul¬ 
sion is a very good idea, and the sooner American manu¬ 
facturers adopt it, or a substitute, the better it will be 
for the trade. 
This applies to films, but then, films are used 
more generally than plates in out-of-the-way 
places by hunters and anglers, though many 
persons are willing to undergo the greater diffi¬ 
culty and anxiety attending the transportation of 
glass plate negatives because of their wider 
range of usefulness and their better keeping 
qualities, real or imaginary, as the case may be. 
CHARLES H. GAUS. 
Death has claimed still another one of the 
old-time long-range riflemen who upheld the 
prestige of America when marksmanship was 
one of the few rather than one of many outdoor 
sports, as at present. 
Far up in the Laurentian Mountains, at a 
camp on Long Lake, in the Bourbinnais- 
Kiamika preserve, came the end of Charles H. 
Gaus’ last vacation. He died on Hallowe’en 
from pneumonia, but he had not been in good 
health recently. For that reason his friends ad¬ 
vised him not to go on the hunting trip he had 
planned, but he thought it would be of benefit 
to him, and no doubt it would have been but 
for the fact that Mr. Gaus contracted a heavy 
cold on the forty-eight mile drive from the rail¬ 
way to the preserve. Bronchitis and then 
pneumonia resulted. 
Major Gaus was born in Zanesville, Ohio, 
Sept. 1, 1840, and since his seventeenth year had 
been a druggist in Albany, N. Y. A Civil War 
veteran, he had also filled nearly all of the 
municipal offices in the city of Albany, includ¬ 
ing four terms as Mayor. Last year he was 
elected State Comptroller. But it was as a rifle¬ 
man that he was known best, and not a few of 
the improvements in arms and ammunition were 
made possible through his painstaking experi¬ 
ments and suggestions. Four years in succession 
he won the Wimbledon international cup, and 
at one time held the military rifle championship 
of the United States. At home he was one of 
a group of enthusiasts who practiced rifle shoot¬ 
ing every week. For twenty-eight years he was 
a member of the State National Guard, and dur¬ 
ing the Spanish War was State assistant in¬ 
spector of small arms practice. 
Major Gaus is survived by Mrs. Gaus and Dr. 
Edward Gaus and Mrs. Charles Russell, their 
children. 
THE EARLY SHOOTING DAYS. 
Beautiful as are these Indian summer days, 
lovely as are the woods with changing colors, 
or hillsides dotted with the bright green of low 
cedars, the darker hue of bayberry or the red 
of huckleberry bushes, these are not the best 
days for shooting. The sun shines warm and 
bright, a haze is in the air, and he who goes 
abroad with gun feels more like sitting down 
on the hillside and dreaming over the beauty of 
the landscape than lustily tramping for birds. 
Besides that, the prairie chickens have packed 
and are wild, the ruffed grouse are in the midst 
of the “crazy season,” and the quail have not 
yet settled down to their winter feeding grounds. 
True it is that the squirrels are active, and if 
one finds a piece of woods where nuts are plenty 
he may get many shots; true it is that many 
ducks have come on and that along the sea¬ 
board they are even plenty, yet the warm 
weather takes the energy out of man’s muscles 
and he cannot put into his day afield the energy 
and drive which in these times of game scarcity 
are needed to secure even a few birds. Ten or 
fifteen days later, when a storm has washed the 
haze out of the atmosphere and torn the leaves 
from the trees, and when keen frosts harden the 
ground each night, driving before them from 
the north wildfowl in numbers, and woodcock 
not a few, then it is that the gunner, filling his 
lungs with the cool crisp air, can start out early 
and tramp long and late, ransacking cover after 
cover and returning at night with a weight in 
his pocket which shall lighten and comfort his 
homeward way. 
In our Middle States October and November 
as open seasons for upland birds are much bet¬ 
ter for the birds than they are /or the gunner. 
And yet we cannot complain of this, for in 
these days the favors should be shown to the 
game and not to the man who hunts it. 
The general object of the National Conserva¬ 
tion Association, organized last week in this 
city, is to secure practical application through 
legislative and administrative measures by the 
States and by the Federal Government of the 
conservation principles adopted by the Gov¬ 
ernors of the United States at their conference 
with President Roosevelt in May, 1908. To 
diminish sickness, prevent accidents and prema¬ 
ture death, and increase the comfort and joy of 
American life are also among its objects, cover¬ 
ing a wide field of usefulness if the organization 
becomes an active factor in the movement 
against the pollution of streams and general 
wastefulness. Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard, is 
president; Walter L. Fisher, of Chicago, vice- 
president, and Thomas R. Shipp, of Indian¬ 
apolis, secretary. To utilize the water power 
of our streams without despoiling their natural 
surroundings and their waters will require 
vigorous effort in the future, for the water 
power question is growing more important 
every year. 
r. 
In Maryland the power boat nuisance has be¬ 
come so common that the State Game and Fish 
Protective Association is raising a special fund 
to combat it. The temptation to employ power 
boats in hunting ducks is strong, and altogether 
too many of those who own these handy little 
craft shoot from them or permit their com¬ 
panions to do so. This reminds us of the fact 
that recently one of the yachting magazines, by 
means of a cover picture and an editorial, ex¬ 
ploited the pursuit of wildfowl in power boats. 
The astonishment which that issue caused 
among sportsmen was natural, for it is very 
generally known that all States containing 
navigable waters prohibit shooting from power 
boats. Power boats, employed legitimately, are 
a boon to man, but, like the motor car, they can 
be and often are used in other ways not so 
commendable. 
